Arguing for the inclusion of Christianity in the broad sweep of national historical writing has been an ongoing challenge that religious historians have undertaken in recent decades with varying degrees of success. Certainly in North America the work of historians studying Christianity has yielded tremendous results that have altered the historiography, though they have not always influenced popular perceptions about the role of religious faith in the nation's history. Within the context of Aoteroa, New Zealand, historians have traditionally shied away from dealing with Christianity as part of the national story. This neglect, whether conscious or not, resulted in historian Ian Breward arguing in the late 1970s for the inclusion of religion as part of the broader historical narrative of the nation, which influenced historical writing for the next two decades. Since 2001 there has been a renewed interest in religious history and The Spirit of the Past is one fruit of that new era of scholarship. Comprised of essays that were presented at the Religious History Association of Aoteroa, New Zealand (RHAANZ) conferences since 2005, the volume illustrates the assorted topics and methodologies that religious historians have taken in recent years to examine and analyze Christianity as part of the nation's history.

Although the writers of New Zealand's history may have neglected the role of Christianity, religious faith was never far from the public consciousness. Historians Peter Lineham and John Stenhouse, in their two outstanding contributions to the volume, reflect on the debate about the place of religion in New Zealand's history that has, at times, escaped the walls of academia and spilled over into the public square. Essays dealing with popular religion, Roman Catholic women's congregations, missionary work among the Māori, women evangelists, the temperance movement, church as a site of romance, and the issue of mixed-religious marriages, show that Christianity mattered in the everyday lives of ordinary New Zealanders. What also becomes clear is that religion in the history of New Zealand has been deeply influenced by transnational exchanges, primarily among English-speaking peoples, that brought a myriad of voices into the everyday lives of New Zealanders. Although the connection between British imperialism and Christian missions to the Māori may cast a large shadow over the nation, this complicated issue does not dominate the volume but rather is included as part of the map of the religious history of this multicultural nation. In fact, the concluding essay in the volume provides tremendous insight into how the recovery of this troubled missionary past is still vitally important in the present. The final essay provides an account of the 2007 discovery of a missionary station cemetery on the grounds of the Tolaga Bay Area School that contained the remains of Christian Māori who had died, most likely of illness, in the mid-nineteenth century. The essay deftly shows how forgotten places, events, and people are crucial to making sense of New Zealand's complex past, especially since no one remembered this important piece of local religious history. This last account marks out a middle ground between divisive cultural politics and the tragedy of forgetting to show that neither of these options is useful for understanding New Zealand's history. In sum, the story of the lost graveyard illustrates the contribution that the essays in this volume make to the ongoing search for New Zealand's Christian past and why remembering that heritage is important for the country today.

In a similar vein, Geoffrey Troughton addresses how Jesus was understood and used by New Zealanders in his monograph entitled, New Zealand Jesus. Following in the footsteps of Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus Through the Centuries, Troughton follows Pelikan's example by examining social, cultural, and political depictions of Jesus but limits his research to New Zealand from the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. What emerges from Troughton's analysis is a rich account of the ubiquitous presence of Jesus in the everyday lives of New Zealanders. Jesus was visually available in art, material culture, and film. In literature Jesus was cast in a variety of forms that ranged from praising his heroic death to emphasizing that he was “all human, brother, friend” (69). Jesus appears to have been completely malleable to fit the wishes of almost any group to further their political, religious, or social cause. Jesus could be used as a fierce critic of organized religion, while serving just as capably as a social reformer, socialist, or trade unionist. The usefulness of Jesus was deeply rooted in conceptions of him that were formed in childhood during family devotions, Bible reading, church, and school. Consequently, the cultural power of his life extended beyond theological meanings proclaimed in pulpits and were refocused on the life of an outcast who suffered and died to bring about social change. Jesus, in this framework, was an optimist who knew that the future could be better than the present. How that future would be brought about was the only question. Consequently, Jesus could be used as a model of ethical virtue, a model of self-sacrifice, or employed to suit any other perceived virtue that was deemed culturally relevant. For example, American pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick's depiction of a masculine Jesus was broadly promoted throughout New Zealand as a way to combat the perceived feminization of Christianity. Fosdick is also useful for highlighting how transnational exchanges shaped the nation's use of Jesus as a model for action. The early New Zealand labor movement identified with Keir Hardie and British Labor's conception of Jesus as the working-man Messiah, while others found in Charles Sheldon's Social Gospel novel, In His Steps, a compelling figure for social justice. These popular uses of Jesus point to a vibrant international religious network that shaped how New Zealanders understood and identified with Jesus. Overall, Troughton's study is an excellent, wide-ranging work that analyzes how various social, political, and religious groups saw Jesus. The effectiveness of the book resides in the ability of Troughton to move with insight across this wide cultural and religious landscape. Although Troughton acknowledges that the book does not cover Māori views of Jesus, this does not diminish the value of the study and leaves room for further research in this area.

Understanding the underlying historiographical issues of New Zealand history writing is vitally important for appreciating the significance of these two volumes. In The Spirit of the Past Troughton and Morrison masterfully brought together high-quality essays that cover a wide range of important topics that speak directly to the importance of religion in New Zealand's history. Likewise, Troughton's monograph is also groundbreaking for offering a broad synthesis of the cultural place of Jesus in New Zealand history. Although each volume has a different goal, they both reflect the high-caliber of writing and research currently underway in New Zealand and should be read by all historians of modern Christianity. These works are vital for not only better understanding the national religious history of New Zealand, but also for confirming that the history of modern Christianity is transnational in scope.